Twitter can be used for business and pleasure. When used correctly, Twitter can be a great tool for small businesses to grow and prosper.

Therefore, today’s post will be a collection of 10 valuable tips every small business could benefit from:

1. As I have mentioned before, and I can’t stress this enough, do not use “eggs” as your Twitter avatar and be smart about your choice of Twitter background.

2. Use a business Twitter account to create a great place for customer relationship management. Teach your clients to use Twitter to keep with the happenings of your company. Also, it can help you share the news and information regarding the success of your clients.

3. Use Twitter as a discussion forum. Ask your clients and prospective clients what they would like to see, hear, taste, and experience.

4. Use Google Analytics to measure the traffic directed from Twitter to your blog or website. If you can measure the traffic related to sales or acquisitions it help you understand an ROI from the tool.

5. Encourage your employees to join Twitter and become part of the conversation.

6. Fill out your profile. Make sure you put information regarding your personal life as well as your business life. This is important because, yes, tweeps do check it. Continue reading »

Some people think that it is easy to get retweets on Twitter. Trust me when I tell you: it’s NOT! More often than not, unless you are famous – a celebrity, singer, company, actor, politician and so on – your tweets might get lost in the tide!

So, from my experience on Twitter, here are 10 valuable tips which can help you increase the number of retweets you get on Twitter:

1. Make Your Tweets Count!

First and most importantly, you should always invest in your tweets. Your tweets are a reflection of who you are on Twitter so you should make them valuable and interesting enough to RT.

In case you haven’t realized it yet, you may have thousands of followers yet get a few retweets on your blog posts or in your mentions. If you are wondering why, remember that quality always comes before quantity. So, make sure the tweeps you want to follow are active on Twitter.

Check out the klout score & recent tweets to measure activity

3. Don’t Be Selfish!

It is only natural that you should treat others like you want to be treated, this applies to Twitter as well. If you want others to retweet you, make sure you retweet others as well!

4. Tweet Your Gratitude:

I found it very useful to tweet my gratitude for the retweets I get every now and then. Showing your appreciation make a lot of difference and encourages tweeps to support you by retweeting you more often.

Many blogs seem to have forgotten that there are new Twitter users signing up every day; they focus their posts on those who know their way around Twitter and just end up providing all sorts of advanced tips!

However, we know better and therefore, out of concern for the new Twitter users, we bring you 10 great tips for Twitter beginners:

Build lists to watch people who matter to you more closely.

You don’t have to read EVERY tweet (it is a waste of time and effort!)

Customized @replies and mentions show other tweeps your humanity and engagement.

Shrink your ULRs; it saves characters and also helps you follow up on and track traffic. Ow.ly and bit.ly are my favorites, and they are free too!